A Chawan made in the dry lacquer technique to imitate the appearance of a roughly fired pottery tea bowl enclosed in a period wooden box dating from the mid Edo (18th -19th century) in the style of Ikkan. There is a seal visible in the base, however it is illegible. The bowl is 10 cm (4 inches) diameter, 6 cm (2-1/2 inches) tall and in excellent condition. It comes in an ancient wooden box with an old paper label upon which is written Ikkanbari Chawan.
The term Ikkan in the title is after Hirai Ikkan, who mastered the technique of creating lacquered receptacles which were incredibly durable and did not warp or deform with time. Hirai Ikkan was a Ming Dynasty lacquer artist who crossed to Japan seeking safety from war-torn China in the 1620s, in the early Edo period. The craft of Ikkanbari began when he came up with an original approach to combine high quality Washi paper with his own lacquerware skills. While the technique was originally intended to afford greater durability to implements for daily use, they came to the attention of Sen no Sōtan, the third-generation successor of Sen no Rikyu, prominent figure in the art of the tea ceremony, when Ikkan visited Daitokuji-temple in Kyoto, and the technique was subsequently used to make tea ceremony implements. At this point, the craft of Ikkanbari was divided into two houses. One, the house of Hiki, focused on making tea ceremony implements as one of ten suppliers for the Sen family, while the house of Hirai continued to make implements for daily life.
